The invention relates to a method for distributing content data packages originated by users of a super peer-to-peer (sP2P) network, wherein the content data packages are to be cached in caching nodes (superpeers) of said network. The network is comprising a plurality of caching nodes and user nodes (peers) of said users and a plurality of data lines that extend between adjacent of said nodes for transmitting said content data packages.
Known solutions for Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) content distribution model use real-time content distribution technique from a central library server to streaming servers.
Commonly, e.g. in a closed network, IPTV solutions place all the content at the centralised library server or ingest live content at a small number of ingest points. A Content Distribution Network (CDN) is later used to distribute the content from the library server to streaming servers close to the network edges. If a user wants to view the content that is not available at the edge streaming server, the request is either served by the library server or rejected.
Another known technique is called ‘stream through’. According to the technique, if the content is not available at a streaming server (Streamer Array), streamer arrays request in real-time content segments from the library server (Vault Array). Then the streamer immediately delivers the content down to the Peer requesting the content, e.g. to a Set Top Box (STB) and caches it for subsequent requests, which are served from the cache. Some optimizations are applied, e.g. pro-active cache filling.
In the stream through technique proprietary distribution and streaming servers often deployed over private network are used to guarantee the required high quality of the real-time segments distributions. This solution is designed for quick distribution of high popularity assets loaded onto the centralised storage, i.e. the Vault Array, and is not well suited for community and user originated content, which can generate small but relatively steady number of requests. For example, when a large number of user originated assets is created and initially uploaded onto the library server, the solution is likely to deny service or reduce the service quality due to several bottlenecks:                the maximum number of segment requests which the library server can sustain for a large number of assets;        the network Bandwidth (BW) required to move on-demand user originated content with high-quality;        the speed of cache invalidation for the streaming array for large number of user originated assets.        
There are also known asset sharing IPTV applications. They allow users to upload their asset to the centralised server for sharing. However, delivering all user generated assets from the centralised server even over closed networks is expensive and creates bottleneck.
Open Internet sP2P networks, typically used for asset sharing, are emerging as alternative content delivery mechanisms for on-demand IPTV services, such as content on demand (CoD), broadcast TV (bTV), push Call of Duty (CoD).
A sP2P network provides caching servers enabling fast access to frequently requested WEB pages or files. Super Peer-to-Peer networks or caching overlay networks are also known as managed on-demand content delivery networks. Therefore, the terminology is interchangeable. Caching servers or caching overlays are common with Internet Service Providers (ISP), enabling efficient access to frequently visited web sites. Similarly, multimedia caching servers are being considered to speed up access to the frequently requested multimedia assets and reduce the network overload.
However, existing approaches consider sP2P optimisations for the operator originated multimedia (CoD, bTV, push CoD). Approaches based upon caching of ‘frequently requested’ multimedia does not always work with user originated content due to potentially small overall number of requests.
Another known solution for sP2P video delivery is called Edge Suite Streaming (AESS). AESS comes close to the model of distributed Video on Demand (VoD) streaming. Live broadcast or media on-demand content streams are delivered over the internet to set or caching edges. Caching edges are located close to the end users, i.e. close to the Peers, and used to serve requested content.
AESS on-demand service downloads a stream of data packages from storage and transfers it reliably to the streaming servers at the edges over the Internet before streaming begins to the user equipment, i.e. to the Peers. Some optimisations are applied for transferring the stream to the streaming server and for the selection of the streaming servers, e.g. for live broadcast services multiple copies of the same stream are sent over different routes from an entry point to the edge streaming servers over the Internet. Therefore, because of the fact that this “multiple copies of the same stream over different routes solution” requires multiple high BW copies which consume significant amount of resource, scaling up requires exponential infrastructure upgrades. So this solution is not well suited for user originated content.
The AESS solution is based upon using sP2P network and is potentially suited for user originated content. However, the existing reactive caching based upon ‘frequency of requests’ is not well adapted for maximising service quality when used with user originated content. This is because overall frequency of requests for user originated content is likely to stay relatively low.
Another drawback of using the known sP2P approach to distribute user originated content is that it does not take into account content properties, e.g. required service reliability, priority, etc. For example, the known sP2P approach it is not well suited for distribution of user originated content with relatively low usage frequency but very high value to a number of scattered users.